Whiskey Sharp: Torn

by Lauren Dane

  As he’d lain in the borrowed bed, in a borrowed luxury condo, he’d realized he wasn’t as adrift as he’d been before she’d come back into his life. Cora, always at the center of his thoughts it seemed.

  It had been so rare in his life to feel this connected to another person. Nearly every other time though it had been lightning fast, as well. So he paid attention because it felt like he was supposed to be there with her eating breakfast at her little table.

  Not that he was entirely comfortable with the intensity between them. He was drawn to her and lacked the will to do anything but obey that call.

  It should have felt lowering. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d been this way with a romantic interest. He was used to being pursued so the flip of perspectives, being the pursuer, wasn’t entirely steady. But while he was uncertain, he had no plans to do anything but keep on with her to see where he ended up.

  “Once I buy my own place, I’ll be coming to you for all my art and art-related needs. It’s nice to have connections who show me their boobs.”

  She laughed, nearly choking on her coffee.

  “I should amend that to singular.” He was suddenly embarrassed he’d said it out loud but he wanted to make it clear. Wanted her to make the same declaration. “I just thought you should know. That it was just the one. You I mean.”

  “Okay. Even if I had the time, which I don’t, I wouldn’t be looking for anyone else just now,” she teased, and it made the knot of anxiety in his chest loosen.

  “Good. Yeah.” That was smooth. “What are you up to this week then?”

  “I’ll be at the gallery. I’m seeing my brother and sister for brunch on Wednesday. I always have lunch with Maybe and Rachel on Friday afternoon. It’s our ritual. Probably dinner out a few times. Especially as this hot guy I know who cooks like a dream will be out of town.”

  That pleased him a lot.

  “I’ll make you lots of food when I get back,” he promised. “So, to be nosy, what’s up with the gallery? It’s clear you run it now, but your mom seemed...”

  * * *

  PLEASED WITH HIS PRESENCE, with the way he looked at her, like he couldn’t get enough, she leaned back in her chair to look at him.

  He came to her before he left town. He even told her he wanted to be exclusive. He made her breakfast and now was wanting to know about her life. Right then and there with this man, Cora knew, just knew, she was meant to open herself up to the magic of what might be.

  “My father bought the gallery for my mom thirty years ago. But two years later she won the Oscar for Best Original Score and her career exploded. He stayed here in Seattle, running not only the gallery but his business. He’s a landscape architect—I think I told you that? Javier, that’s our oldest brother, he and Beatriz pretty much helped him raise me, Beto and Finley. I grew up at the gallery. It’s my second home in a lot of ways.”

  “Javier and Beatriz aren’t local, right?”

  “Javi is a choreographer. He lives in Toronto. Bee lives in Virginia. She’s a psychiatrist.” That they’d moved to the other side of the continent hadn’t been lost on Cora. “Bee took me to school more than both my parents combined. Even when she was an undergrad at the UW, she lived at home to help.”

  “Are you close with them still?”

  It was more complicated than that. “There are a lot of ups and downs in life, you know? Lots of low times when you’re not sure how you’ll get through. But no matter what, no matter how chaotic things are, my family is always a united front. I’d give my kidney to my siblings.” Cora paused.

  “But?” He got up to grab the apples he’d sliced and peeled to bring them to her table for them to share.

  “They escaped. Both of them would deny that. But of course they did and it was absolutely what they should have done. They had the weirdest childhood of all the kids.” Cora winced and looked up at him. Speaking of weird childhoods...

  He burst into laughter as he reached across to squeeze her hand briefly, and then left their fingers tangled together. “Well, look, your childhood is another universe of weird. Which sounds insulting—I’m sorry.”

  “That’s not insulting. It was weird. No doubt about it. Back to Javier and Beatriz though. We can talk about my stuff later on.

  “I’m closest to Beto. We’re only a year apart so we had each other as playmates and confidants when everyone else was doing their busy thing. I’d say Javi is more an uncle to me than a brother. He’s fifteen years older than I am. But we’re connected. He’s a lot like Walda in that he’s all about his art. He was a dancer until he aged out, sped a little by a series of injuries and surgeries. Dancers are hard on their bodies.” She shook her head. “Anyway, that’s his focus. He works and when he’s not working he’s watching other people work. He comes back home at Christmas but stays with Finley or here with me. He and Walda are very complicated.”

  “Part of the reason he’s in Toronto?”

  She laughed. “It’s not really a coincidence that he and Bee got as far away from Seattle as they could.”

  “And Beatriz?”

  “Bee is Bee.” Cora shrugged. “Rachel knows more about her personal life than I do. She’s easier with friends than she is with family.” Which was most likely connected to their mother too. “She loves us and we love her. It works for everyone that she’s where she wants to be.”

  “Makes sense. And you’re the fixer. I can see that already.”

  “It’s a family joke that I’m the only adult of the whole lot.” Not so much a joke at that point, it was the truth. “Anyway, I’m in a transitional phase. I want to run the gallery. Beto has been taking most of the load while I travel with Walda, but his artistic love is development. He’s actually quite good at it. Probably helps that he’s handsome and good with people.”

  “And what does your mother think about that? You replacing her?”

  Cora snorted. “She’s never really run the gallery anyway. She’s the face because she’s already well-known in the art world. She likes a place to show her own work when she decides to, but mainly, she’s disinterested in the work of running a gallery and really just wants to make art.” And take credit for other people’s work. “It’s going to be a matter of presenting it to her in the right way because it’s really not a case of me taking her job.”

  She was about to jiggle her boobs at him to get his attention pointed in the direction of her bedroom when her phone started to buzz. She looked at the screen and sighed. “I have to take this. I’m sorry.”

  Beau waved her apology away. “I’ll clean up while you deal with that.”

  It was her mother. “I need you to get me those aloe juice drinks.”

  “Okay. I’ll order you some. In the future though, you can let Kay know so she can pick you up some when she goes marketing.”

  “She never gets the right ones. You do.”

  Kay was the house manager for her parents and she took a lot of the day-to-day load from Cora’s shoulders. Still, there were always these little things Walda insisted no one knew how to do right but her youngest daughter.

  “I’ll let her know which Trader Joe’s has them.” Cora was fairly sure Kay already knew exactly that, but it never hurt to just underline for her mother that she had a full-time person to run her errands.

  “I don’t know why you need to do that when you know where they are.”

  “Because it’s Kay’s job and she does the marketing so why wouldn’t she want to be sure to get your favorite aloe juice?”

  “You do it best,” her mother told her.

  “There’s no doing it best. It’s grocery shopping. It’s a matter of getting the things people want and need.”

  “But then you make sure I have everything else I need.” Walda’s voice had a tiny bit of petulance at the end.

  “Mai, I love you. But I promise you this
isn’t a matter of skill, just a matter of knowing what to get you. There are things only I can do, but this isn’t one of them. Be sure you get all your prescriptions filled this week.”

  “You can do that when you get the aloe,” her mother said as if she hadn’t planned that from the first. “Anyway, I’m not sure I even need that blood pressure medication. It makes me tired.”

  This was officially an old argument. Her mom’s I do what I want gene was one thing when she was younger and when she focused it on her work, but the older she got, the more it began to creep into her health and other things.

  And became another issue Cora had become responsible for. “We’ve talked about this. You can’t just stop taking your pills so if you really do want to go off them, you need to do it with your doctor’s supervision.” Cora massaged the space between her eyebrows where her headache had begun.

  “So bring my aloe juice with the pills later today. We’ll have lunch after.”

  Just like her mother to just change the subject.

  “I can’t. I’ve got appointments all afternoon. You know how to call in your pills. The number is on the bottle. I’ll touch base with Kay on the juice. ’Bye.” Cora disconnected with a heavy sigh.

  “Every time I try to leave they pull me back in,” she muttered, looking up to discover Beau standing very close.

  “Everything all right?” he asked.

  “She and I are experiencing some growing pains. I have to be firm and she has to listen and respect. And then I have to be forgiving because her strong suit is not listening.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Cora shrugged. “It’s the way of things. We’ll both survive and thrive in our new roles. Hopefully. I’m not under any misapprehension that it’ll be smooth or always easy, but it’s what needs to happen.”

  “I have to get moving. I still haven’t finished packing. If you need me to, I can probably put this on hold. Go sign things later in the week,” he told her, taking her hands and pulling her closer.

  “Aw thank you.” She reached up to kiss him, missing his lips but getting just beneath, against his beard. Yum. “I’m good. I’ll see you when you get back. Travel safe.”

  She kept it light, though she knew that since he’d come back into her life she’d miss his presence in it. He’d return to Seattle and to her. She felt it in her gut.

  Then he picked her up, taking them to the couch, resting her butt against the back of it. Cora wrapped herself around him as he bent to kiss her long and slow. He tasted of coffee and strawberry jam and felt like nothing else she’d ever experienced.

  “I’ll talk with you soon. Have a good week,” he said, stepping back at last.

  It was a good thing the couch was there to support her because he’d gone and made her knees all rubbery again.

  “’Bye, Beau.” She walked him to the door, and then watched as he loped with long, ground-eating strides, out of her sight.

  CHAPTER TEN

  It’s no coincidence

  my lips cannot forget

  the way you taste

  “THING IS, CORA, Dad needs to be doing this stuff, not you. Not me. Not Finley or Bee or Javi,” Beto told her after they’d ordered their food.

  She’d just finished relating the phone call with their mother the day before.

  “I think she scares him,” Cora said. “He wants to take care of her. She’s cool with it but not when it’s anything that might make her look or feel weak. So he can drive her around and take her to all her favorite restaurants and that, but medicine pickup or doctor’s appointments might be difficult.”

  “You need to tell her no. She calls you because you do what she wants you to.” Finley shrugged. “You don’t want to work for her anymore. Quit your job. People do it every day.”

  “Mom isn’t just people. She’s a force of nature. You can’t tell her no. You can’t quit her. That’s not how it works,” Beto said.

  “What is it you want?” Finley asked her. “You’re part of the problem here. You let her get away with it.”

  Cora rolled her eyes at her sister. “I let her? You’ve met your mother, right?” She chose sarcasm instead of giving in to the hurt that her sister’s casual comment brought.

  And it wasn’t altogether inaccurate.

  “Stop being an asshole, Fin. What do you want to do, Cora?” Beto asked.

  “I want to run the gallery. I’ve thrown myself into it since I got back from London, wanting to see if it was something I was really suited to or if I’d built it up into more than it really was.” Cora paused. “I love my job. I want to curate. I want to build something that is uniquely mine and that can be passed to our kids. I want a dog. I want to be in a relationship that could develop into something long-term. I want to travel for pleasure.”

  “Fair enough. All of it. But you said yourself you’re already working at the gallery. So what’s the real issue?” Finley asked.

  “I do it, but I have to deal with Mom’s stuff too. That’s what I need to change.” It was making her bitter and resentful and Cora didn’t want that.

  “I vote we get her a new personal assistant,” Finley told them, pouring syrup on her freshly arrived waffles.

  “Whatever we present to her, we need to show a united front. If she senses any weakness she’ll seize on it. Cora has been the person who makes her life effortless. She won’t let go of that easily,” Beto said.

  “We all need a Cora, that’s all I’m saying,” Finley told them both.

  “You don’t feel like I’m trying to push you out?” Cora asked Beto after winking at her sister.

  “I like art and I love the gallery, but I don’t want to curate. And I don’t want to be the director. You’re good at it. I’m tolerable when you give me very specific instructions. I’d really like to dig in more with Dad, you know?”

  Their father had a landscape architecture business. It was his art and he was marvelous at it. And Cora had no doubt her brother would be good at it in concert with their dad.

  “Okay. I support that and whatever we need to do so we can make it happen. I guess we have some discussion points for the next family dinner, huh?” Cora said. “Now let’s talk about your lives a bit. I missed you both.”

  * * *

  BEAU LOOKED AT the black SUV he could have sworn he’d seen drive past the café where he sat with his agent—and friend—Jeremy more than once. Probably looking for a parking spot. He hoped it wasn’t the paparazzi.

  “Now that I’m moving to Seattle, you can add me to your list of people to see when you come to visit. I know you have other clients up that way,” Beau told him.

  “I’m up there a lot, actually. I’ve got friends and clients in Hood River, Oregon, as well as on Bainbridge Island and in Seattle proper. I’ll be up in the early summer for sure for a graduation. I’ve considered relocating a time or two. But...”

  Jeremy’s ex-wife was a certified rock star. They’d suffered the horrible loss of a child and it had broken their relationship. Remarried and a mother with someone else, she lived in Seattle and was still one of his clients, which made for a big reason not to relocate, Beau supposed.

  “I get it,” Beau assured him.

  “Ian tells me you’re seeing someone and it’s serious,” Jeremy said, changing the subject.

  “I actually met her seventeen years ago. She wasn’t even an adult yet and I was only barely one. She’s friends with Gregori and Wren so that’s how we reconnected. It’s, I don’t know, super intense.”

  “So, she’s in your circle of friends. That’s new.”

  “I can’t stay away.”

  Jeremy snorted and raised his glass. “Then don’t. You don’t mind being a hedonist in every other aspect of your life—why not let yourself like this woman as deeply as you want to?”

  “I’m trying to give in to my urg
es less. Before I think about them a little at least. I’ve been doing little else but think about her.”

  “Ah. You’re not in control and you don’t know how to handle it,” Jeremy said with a shrug.

  “I’ve done plenty of out of control things in my life. Part of her appeal is that there’s an edge to it. Something that challenges me subtly and yet completely. It’s alluring and terrifying. She writes poetry and loves my cooking and the sex... It’s astounding sex.”

  “You’re vulnerable with her. That’s necessary. If you don’t have that, you don’t have what it takes to get through the rough spots.”

  “It’s been just less than a month. I find myself aiming my schedule to align with hers. I make up reasons to drop over because I really love her place.” Beau shrugged, a little embarrassed but lighter for the admission. “I’ve been trying to fight it and we’ve both been so busy it’s been easier to tell myself to go slow. But... I don’t want to anymore.”

  “Something I’ve always admired about you is the way you’re open to the truth of things. You ask questions. You seek learning. You’re the kind of person who wants to know but once you do, you’re not going to play games to pretend the truth away.”

  “Which is a long way to say I should trust how I’m feeling?” Beau asked.

  Jeremy nodded. “More or less, yep. This person was thrown into your path for a reason. You can trust yourself when it comes to cooking and your on-camera work, you can trust your gut when it comes to other things too.”

  It had been hard to trust his gut after he’d left Road to Glory. Everything he’d thought was true had been a lie. And not just a lie, but a devastating series of lies told over decades. Lies he still had to deal with to that day.

  “Christ.” Beau ran his fingers through his hair.

  Jeremy said, “I know what happened to you fucked you up. It was terrible and it would have fucked anyone up. You’re strong, but you’re not superhuman. Of course you doubt yourself. You always have when it comes to people instead of business decisions. But look at your close circle of friends. You’ve done right by yourself and by the rest of us. And if I can be totally honest, it’s sort of gratifying to see you all uncertain over someone. All these years and you dicked around and moved on when it was over with no feelings hurt on either side. This is raw and scary. That’s why it’s so hot.”